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When feedback backfires – Explicit performance feedback can impair cognitive strategy choice
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Description: Frequently, problems can be solved in more than one way. In modern computerized en-vironments, more ways than ever exist. Naturally, human problem solvers do not always decide for the best-performing cognitive strategy available. One underlying reason might be the inability to continuously and correctly monitor each strategy’s performance and make according inferences. Here, we supported some of our participants’ explicit monitoring ability by providing performance feedback. Specifically, participants engaged in an object comparison task, which they were asked to solve with one of two cognitive strategies: an internal strategy (mental rota-tion) or an extended strategy (manual rotation). After receiving no feedback (30 participants), trialwise feedback (30 participants), or blockwise feedback (30 participants) in these no choice trials, all participants were asked to estimate their performance with both strategies and were then allowed to freely choose between strategies in choice trials. Results indicated that explicit feedback improves explicit performance estimates. However, results also indicated that increased awareness does not guarantee improved strategy choice and that explicit feedback might even tamper with more adaptive implicit mechanisms and harm strategy choice. Thus, we advise against prematurely implementing explicit feedback. While it might support adaptive strategy choice in certain environments, it did not in the present setup. We encourage further research that improves the understanding of the interplay between explicit and implicit performance monitoring as it will help create interventions that support human problem solvers in making better cognitive strategy choices in the future.